Another deep dive into the pre-Talking Movies archives uncovers a drab rom-com starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan before Watchmen and Negan!

The Accidental Husband is the sort of drab film that inspires long involved tangents in your own mind as you try to ignore the boring predictability of the on-screen action. Uma Thurman is Dr Emma Lloyd, a relationship expert with her own phone-in radio show and whose first book of dating advice is being launched by the publishing house of her fiancé Richard (Colin Firth). However when she advises one of her listeners to break up with her fiancé, the duly jilted fireman Patrick Sullivan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sets about taking the ‘love doctor’ down a peg. One ingenious hack into the NYC municipal database later and Emma and Patrick are man and wife, as she finds to her horror when she arrives at city offices with Richard to sign their forms. Her futile efforts to get Patrick to annul their non-existent marriage inevitably see her start to question her relationship with her dull, dependable fiancé whose worst vice (and only funny characteristic) is his comfort eating when stressed.

The Accidental Husband is above all other objections just painfully predictable. Will Emma throw away a lifetime of habits and, ignoring the advice she dispenses every day, choose the risky option? What do you think?! The painful whirring of the plot mechanics aren’t drowned out by laughter as Uma Thurman simply cannot do comedy. She produced and starred in this to prove to herself that she can, but even her role as a DJ invokes memories of The Truth about Cats & Dogs – which worked because she was not the lead but was supporting Janeane Garofalo. This film is Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution that Uma murders romantic comedies with her stiff, awkward approach which has to resort to slapstick to engage our sympathies.

Lindsay Sloane as Emma’s PA (and sole friend) Marcy takes what good lines there are, as is customary in romantic comedies where second-string is always the better role, and Colin Firth is sadly underused. Jeffrey Dean Morgan meanwhile is rugged. Apparently that’s what the ladies like these days and at the age of 41, courtesy of his celebrated role in Grey’s Anatomy, he is now a bona fide heart-throb. Morgan also appeared as the charismatic father in TV horror series Supernatural so it’s little surprise that he’s rather good here as the roguish NYC fire-fighter whose heart is in the right place.

But this film has very little heart. Emma likes to remind her listeners endlessly that 43% of American marriages end in divorce. That spectre of futility hangs over the film as she spouts invective about the stupidity of expecting lasting happiness in the modern world. The Accidental Husband systematically deconstructs the concepts which support the romantic comedy genre even as it performs them making for a quite singularly depressing experience.